Hongtao Lu, PhD
- Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Elpiscience Biopharma, Shanghai, China
Dr. Hongtao Lu is co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Elpiscience Biopharma, a biotech company focusing on innovative medicine for immuno-oncology. Trained as an immunologist and as an industry veteran for more than 20 years, he has extensive drug discovery experience across several therapeutic areas (autoimmune diseases, oncology and neuroscience) utilizing different therapeutic modalities (small-molecule and biologicals). Prior to Elpiscience, he had spent four years with Zai Lab, a NASDAQ-listed company, as co-founder and executive vice president for Scientific Research. Before Zai Lab, he was with GlaxoSmithKline as the founding head of Neuroimmunology Discovery Performance Unit (NI-DPU), where he led about 70 biologists and chemists focusing on drug discovery in neuroinflammatory diseases and neurodegenerative diseases. Dr. Lu spent his early career with Berlex Biosciences and Bayer Schering Pharma, where he conducted target identification and validation in autoimmune inflammatory diseases and oncology. Dr. Lu holds a Ph.D. in Regulatory Biology and conducted his graduate research at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation followed by post-doctoral fellowship at Yale University School of Medicine under the guidance of Dr. Richard Flavell.